Library of the World

Princess Maria postponed her departure, Sonya, the count tried to replace Natasha, but could not. They saw that she alone could keep her mother from despairing. For three weeks Natasha lived with her mother, slept in a chair in her room, sang, fed her, and kept talking to her," she said, "because one gentle, caressing voice calmed her down. Her mother's soul wound could not heal. Petya's death ripped off half her life. One month after learning of Petya's death, who had caught her as a fresh and...

Apart from the general feeling of alienation from all people, Natasha experienced a special feeling of alienation from her family. Her father, mother, Sonya, were so close to her, so familiar, so everyday that all their words, feelings seemed to her to be an insult to the world in which she had been living lately, and she was not only indifferent, but hostile to them. She heard Dunyashi's words about Peter Ilyich, about misfortune, but did not understand them. "What kind of misfortune do they have...

It seemed to her that she was about to understand what she was looking at with a terrible, unbearable question. At the end of December, in a black woolen dress, with a slanting, slanting and pale beam, Natasha sat with her legs in the corner of the sofa, crumpling and dissolving the ends of the belt, and looked at the corner of the door. She looked where he had gone, at the other side of life. And the side of life that she had never thought of before, which had previously seemed so far away, so incredible to her, was now closer and more familiar to her, more understandable than that side of life, where everything was either emptiness and destruction, or suffering and insult...

When a man sees a dying animal, the horror is overwhelming him: what he is - his essence - is obviously destroyed in his eyes - ceases to exist. But when the dying person is a person and the loved one is felt, then, except for the horror before the destruction of life, there is a tear and spiritual wound, which, as well as the physical wound, sometimes kills, sometimes heals, but always hurts and is afraid of external irritating touch. After the death of Prince Andrei Natasha and Princess Maria felt it equally. They, morally bent down and frowned on the terrible, hanging over them clouds of death, did not dare to look into the face of life...

Quickly the horses were disassembled in half darkness, the girlfriends were pulled up and the teams were sorted out. Denisov stood at the guardhouse, giving his last orders. The infantry of the game, spanking hundreds of legs, went forward on the way and quickly disappeared between the trees in the dawn fog. Esaul ordered something from the Cossacks. Petya kept his horse in check, looking forward to the order to sit down. Washed with cold water, his face, especially his eyes burned with fire, chills ran down his back, and something was shaking quickly and evenly throughout his body...

Back at the guardhouse, Petya caught Denisov in the halls. Denisov was worried, worried and annoyed that he had let Petya go, waiting for him. - Thank God! - He shouted. - Well, thank God! - He repeated it as he listened to Pete's enthusiastic story. - And Cheg't take you, he did not sleep because of you! - Denisov spoke. - Well, thank God, go to bed. Still sighing before the iron. - Yes... No," said Petya. - I don't want to sleep yet. I know myself, too, if I fall asleep, it's over. And then I got used to not sleeping before the battle...

Having dressed in French overcoats and a kiver, Petya and Dolokhov went to the clearing, from which Denisov looked at the camp, and, leaving the forest in complete darkness, went down into the valley. Dolokhov went downstairs and told the Cossacks accompanying him to wait here and drove a big lynx on the way to the bridge. Petya, dying of anxiety, was driving with him. - If we get caught, I won't surrender alive, I have a gun," Petya whispered. - Don't speak Russian," Dolokhov said in a quick whisper, and at the same moment in the dark he heard a call: "Qui vive? 1 and the sound of the gun...

From the drummer, who was given vodka and lamb by Denisov's order, and whom Denisov ordered to put on a Russian caftan, so that, without sending him away with the prisoners, to leave him with the party, Petya's attention was distracted by the arrival of Dolokhov. Petya in the army had heard many stories about Dolokhov's extraordinary bravery and cruelty with the French, and therefore since Dolokhov had entered the hut, Petya had stared at him without losing sight of him, and was increasingly cheering him up, jerking his head up, so as not to be unworthy even of such a society as Dolokhov...

When Petya left Moscow, leaving his family, he joined his regiment and soon after was taken by an ordinary man to the general who commanded a large detachment. From the time of his production as an officer, and especially from his entry into the active army, where he participated in the Battle of Vyazemsky, Petya was in a constantly happy and excited state of joy at the fact that he was a great, and in a constantly enthusiastic rush not to miss any case of real heroism. He was very happy with what...

Having talked a few more times with Esaul about tomorrow's attack, which now, looking at the proximity of the French, Denisov seemed to have finally decided, he turned the horse and went back. - Well, bg'at, let's go talk about it," he said to Pete. Driving up to the forest guard, Denisov stopped looking into the forest. In the woods, between the trees, between the big easy steps, walking on long legs, with long winding arms, a man in a jacket, legs and a Kazan hat, with a gun over his shoulder and an axe behind his belt...

It rained through, but the fog fell and drops of water from the branches of the trees. Denisov, sesaul, and Petya were silently following the man in the hood, who was walking with his legs turned upside down on the roots and wet leaves, leading them to the edge of the forest. When the man came out on the drag, he stopped, looked around and headed towards the thinning wall of the trees. He stopped at the big oak tree, which had not yet fallen off the leaf, and mysteriously lured it to him with his hand...

It was an autumn, warm, rainy day. The sky and horizon were the same colour as the muddy water. It was falling as if the fog was falling, and then suddenly it was raining heavily. Denisov was riding on a pedigree, thin, with the sides of a horse pulled up, in a burka and a hat, from which water was flowing. He, like his horse, mowing its head and squeezing its ears, was wrinkled by the rain and was anxiously looking forward. His face, which was thin and overgrown with a thick, short, black beard, seemed angry...