Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
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War And Peace
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behind, but he
galloped on. In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were
running from right to left across the road. One of them fell in the
mud under his horses feet.
Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the
midst of that crowd terrible screams arose. Petya galloped up, and the
first thing he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman,
clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.
"Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!" shouted Petya, and giving rein to his
excited horse he galloped forward along the village street.
He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged
Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road,
were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking
Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red
face, had been defending himself against the hussars. When Petya
galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen. "Too late again!"
flashed through Petyas mind and he galloped on to the place from
which the rapid firing could be heard. The shots came from the yard of
the landowners house he had visited the night before with Dolokhov.
The French were making a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden
thickly overgrown with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who
crowded at the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the
gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint,
shouting to his men. "Go round! Wait for the infantry!" he exclaimed
as Petya rode up to him.
"Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!" shouted Petya, and without pausing a moment
galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the
smoke was thickest.
A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others
plashed against something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after
Petya into the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke
some of the French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes
to meet the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the
pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead of
holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly and
strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his saddle. His
horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was smoldering in the
morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily on to the
wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked rapidly
though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his skull.
After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the
house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that
they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted and went up to Petya, who lay
motionless with outstretched arms.
"Done for!" he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet
Denisov who was riding toward him.
"Killed?" cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the
unmistakably lifeless attitude--very familiar to him--in which Petyas
body was lying.
"Done for!" repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these words
afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who
were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. "We wont take
them!" he called out to Denisov.
Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with
trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained,
mud-bespattered face which had already gone white.
"I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!"
he recalled Petyas words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise
at the sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denisov turned
away, walked to the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.
Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and Dolokhov was
Pierre Bezukhov.
CHAPTER XII
During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been
issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners
among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party
was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it
had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled
the first stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other
half had gone on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had
marched in front of the prisoners was left; they had all
disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them
during the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junots enormous
baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a
cavalry baggage train.
From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in
three columns,
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