War and Peace: Original Version - Лев Толстой

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frowned, surveying the soldiers as though he were threatening them with punishment. The cadet Mironov bent down every time a shot flew over. Rostov, standing on the left flank on his mount Grachik, handsome but with the bad legs, had the happy air of a pupil called out in front of a large audience to answer an examination question in which he was certain that he would distinguish himself. He glanced round at everyone with a clear, bright gaze, as though asking them to notice how calmly he stood his ground under fire. But in his face also, even against his will, that same expression of something new and stern appeared around the mouth.

       NAPOLEON IN 1807 Engraving by Debucourt

      “Who’s that bowing over there? Cadet Miwonov! That won’t do, look at me!” shouted Denisov, who could not stay still and was whirling round on his horse in front of the squadron. Vaska Denisov’s face, with its snub nose and black hair, and his entire stocky little figure with the short, hair-covered fingers of the sinewy hand in which he was grasping the hilt of his drawn sabre, was exactly the same as it always was, especially in the evening after he had drunk two bottles. He was only redder than usual and, throwing his shaggy head back and up as birds do when they sing, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the sides of his good Bedouin with his small feet and appearing to fall backwards, he galloped off to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice that they should inspect their pistols. As he rode by he glanced at the handsome officer Peronsky in the rear and hastily turned away.

      In his semi-dress hussar uniform, on his steed that cost thousands, Peronsky was very handsome. But his handsome face was as white as snow. His thoroughbred stallion, hearing the terrible sounds above its head, had entered into that fervent fury of the well-trained thoroughbred of which children and hussars are so fond. He kept snorting, jingling the chain and rings of his bit and striking at the ground with his slim, muscular leg, sometimes not reaching it and waving his foot through the air, or, turning his lean head to the right and the left as far as his bit allowed, he squinted at his rider with a black, bulging bloodshot eye. Turning fierily away from him, Denisov set off towards Kiersten. The staff-captain was riding at a walk towards Denisov on a broad, sedate mare. The staff-captain, with his long moustaches, was serious as always, only his eyes were gleaming more than usual.

      “What is this?” he said to Denisov. “This action won’t get as far as an attack. You’ll see, we’ll withdraw.”

      “God only knows what they’re doing!” shouted Denisov. “Ah! Wostov!” he cried to the cadet as he noticed him. “Well, here you are at last.” And he smiled approvingly as he looked at the cadet, evidently pleased for him.

      Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just at that moment the commander appeared on the bridge. Denisov galloped towards him.

      “Your excellency! Permission to attack! I’ll thwow them back!”

      “What do you mean, attack?” said the commander in a bored voice, frowning as though at some tiresome fly. “And why are you holding position here? Can’t you see the flankers are withdrawing? Pull your squadron back.”

      The squadron crossed the bridge and moved out of range without losing a single man. They were followed across by the second squadron, which had been on the skirmish line, and the final Cossacks withdrew, clearing that side of the river.

      IX

      After crossing the bridge, one after another the two squadrons of Pavlograd Hussars set off back uphill. The regimental commander, Karl Bogdanovich Schubert, came across to Denisov’s squadron and rode at a walk not far from Rostov, not paying the slightest attention to him, even though this was the first time they had seen each other since the old clash over Telyanin. Rostov, feeling that at the front he was in the power of a man whom he now considered himself guilty of offending, kept his eyes fixed on the athletic back, blond head and red neck of the regimental commander. Sometimes it seemed to Rostov that Bogdanich was only pretending not to notice him and that his entire purpose now was to test the cadet’s courage, and he drew himself erect and gazed around cheerfully: sometimes it seemed to him that Bogdanich was deliberately riding close in order to demonstrate his own courage to Rostov. Sometimes Nikolai thought that now his enemy would deliberately send the squadron into a reckless attack in order to punish him. Sometimes he thought that after the attack the commander would walk up to him and magnanimously offer him, now a wounded man, the hand of reconciliation.

      Zherkov’s high-shouldered figure, well-known to the Pavlograders, rode up to the regimental commander. After his banishment from the central headquarters staff, Zherkov had not remained in the regiment, saying that he was no fool, to go slaving away at the front, when he would be better rewarded at staff headquarters for doing nothing, and he had managed to obtain a place as an orderly with Prince Bagration. He had come to his former commanding officer with an order from the commander of the rearguard.

      “Colonel,” he said with grim seriousness, addressing Nikolai’s enemy and surveying his comrades, “the order is to halt and fire the bridge.”

      “Who the ordered?” the colonel asked morosely.

      “That I do not know, colonel, who the ordered,” the cornet replied naïvely and seriously, “only that the prince told me: ‘Go and tell the colonel that the hussars must go back quickly and fire the bridge.’”

      Following Zherkov, an officer of the retinue rode up to the colonel of hussars with the same order. Following the officer of the retinue, the fat Nesvitsky rode up on a Cossack horse that was scarcely able to carry him at a gallop.

      “What’s this, colonel,” he cried as he was still riding up, “I told you to fire the bridge; and now someone’s garbled it, everyone’s going mad up there and you can’t make sense of anything.”

      The colonel unhurriedly halted the regiment and turned to Nesvitsky:

      “You telled me about the combustible substances,” he said, “but you don’t told me anything about setting fire to them.”

      “Come on now, old man,” Nesvitsky said when he came to a halt, taking off his cap and straightening his sweaty hair with a plump hand, “certainly I told you to fire the bridge when you had put the combustible substances in place.”

      “I’m not your ‘old man’, mister staff officer, and you did not told me fire the bridge! I know military service, and am in the habit of following strictly orders. You telled me they would set fire to the bridge. How by the Holy Spirit know can I …”

      “There, it is always the same,” said Nesvitsky with a wave of his hand.

      “What brings you here?” he asked, addressing Zherkov.

      “Why, the same thing. But you have become all damp, allow me to wring you out.”

      “You said, mister staff officer …” the colonel continued in an offended tone.

      “Colonel,” the officer of the retinue interrupted, “you need to hurry, or the enemy will have moved his guns close enough to fire grapeshot.”

      The colonel looked without speaking at the officer of the retinue, at the fat headquarters staff officer, at Zherkov and frowned.

      “I shall fire the bridge,” he said in a solemn tone of voice as though, despite all the problems they were causing him, this was how he showed his magnanimity.

      Striking his horse with his long, well-muscled legs, as if it were to blame for everything, the colonel rode out in front and commanded the second squadron, the very one in which Rostov was serving under Denisov’s command, to go back to the bridge.

      “So that’s how it is,” thought Rostov, “he wants to test me!” His heart faltered and the blood rushed to his face. “Then let him look and see if

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